Thursday, February 28, 2013

Van ISD is a sleepy East Texas school district near Tyler,
Texas that made the news last month when its board of trustees voted on a new
policy for protecting its schools from the Adam Lanzas of the world.

It voted to authorize 30 teachers and staff members district-wide
to carry concealed weapons on school campuses and at school events. This was
per a recent state law that gives Texas school districts the option of arming
its teachers. Here is a snippet of the announcement found on the district
website.

“After consulting with our school attorney, local law
enforcement, DPS officials, and pursuant to its authority under Texas Penal
Code 46.03(a)(1), the board authorized specific school employees and other
persons to possess certain firearms on school property, at school-sponsored or
school-sanctioned events, and at board meetings in accordance with board policy
CKC(Local).”

“By approving this policy, the board addressed concerns
about effective and timely response to emergency situations at schools
including invasion of the schools by an armed outsider, hostage situations, students
who are armed and posing a direct threat of physical harm to themselves or
others, and similar circumstances.”

“Please rest assured that we will remain vigilant. Van ISD
will continue to do everything we can to ensure that our children are educated in
an environment that is safe, healthy, and supportive.”

The inclusion of having guns at board meetings, to me, is
particularly affecting.

But these employees had to undertake a mandatory course in concealed
handgun training, mandatory before being able to secure a concealed weapon
permit in Texas.

And a good thing, too, otherwise we would have never heard
about how a school custodian taking this course last night shot
himself in the leg while engaged in one on one training after the class.
The gun suffered a “mechanical failure” and it went off, the bullet ricocheting
off the floor and slamming into his leg.

Well we all know that accidents like that cannot happen with
school children around because, well, because of the training thing.

At last report, the school district was not in the process
of rethinking its policy, so obviously they still think that students will be
safer and healthier in the presence of armed teachers and custodians.

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Perhaps in a move to give House Republicans a glimpse of the
near future, the Homeland Security Department’s Immigrant and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) has announced that, in anticipation of the tight budget that
will result from The Sequester, ICE has started releasing hundreds of illegal
immigrants being held in immigration jails awaiting deportation proceedings.

Instead of holding them for $164 per day, ICE is letting
them out on “supervised release,” a program costing between 50 cents and $14 per
day.

Other cost cutting measures are sure to follow, including
border patrols and airport screenings.

This move, and the other anticipated ones, are menu items from
what can be termed “Republican Hell.”

And Republican congresscreeps are screaming bloody murder.

I think that this is a good proactive move on the part of
the administration. It not only cuts spending – a “Republican Heaven” but it
gives Americans an idea of how many ways they want to skewer their Republican
legislators. But I think it doesn’t go far enough.

Like legal services and law enforcement.

Federal courts should maybe suspend some legal proceedings like
issuing Writs of Habeas Corpus. And instead of having federal law enforcement
officers, maybe they could be replaced by drones.

Then there’s all the hidden costs of running Congress.

While federal legislators have constitutionally guaranteed
salaries, isn’t it time that they close their dining rooms and plushy weight
rooms? Cut travel budgets and perks? Maybe they will have to take out their own
trash, too. And they are going to have to pay for their own smartphones.

If TEApublicans are truly salivating over sequester, let
them get a piece of what they are shoveling down the throats of the middle
class.

Monday, February 25, 2013

They saved it up for the final award of the evening, Best
Picture. Then Jack Nicholson turned over announcing the winner to FLOTUS Michele
Obama who had her very own envelope to open. She obviously was having a good
time, and the young women standing behind her seemed to be tickled to death.
One even bounced on the balls of her feet at one point.

And “Argo” won.

And hundreds of thousands of TEApublicans’ heads began to
explode.

And they didn’t waste any time criticizing the First Lady
for barging in on their television viewing. They didn’t want to be reminded one
more time yesterday that there is a black family living in the White House and
that Barack Obama was re-elected. They didn’t want to see her having a good
time.

So they said things like “Can these people wear out their
welcome?” (Limbaugh) or “It is not enough that President Obama pops up at every
sporting event in the nation. Now the first lady feels entitled.” (Jennifer
Rubin).

Let’s get something straight here. With the exception of a
few well-known people (one of whom is known to talk to empty chairs), the
Hollywood film industry can be confidently called Obama’s “Base.” As such, it
is a no-brainer that some sort of presidential participation in their party of
the year might occur. It is, after all, their party and they can pretty much do
what they want and invite whomever they chose to speak. They let us at home
watch it live, but it is their party, and these conservative grumps have no
standing in this. Complaining about the First Lady being at The Oscars, even
remotely, is like complaining about the taste of the cake and ice cream at
someone’s birthday party that you are crashing.

I don’t recall a massive hue and cry by Democrats when, in
2002, Laura Bush appeared as one respondent in a short film about “What Do the
Movies Mean to You?" No one said she was intruding.

The haters will continue to hate. That’s just what they do
and they can’t help it. I really do think they should mind their own business
though. Talk about entitlement, where did they ever get the idea that they
could have a say in who the Academy invites to speak, and who they would rather
not hear from.

This article in the Houston Chronicle outlines this
phenomenon, an article about Ted Cruz’s recent visits to Leander, Texas
businesses. Leander is a burg outside of Austin and contains two businesses
whose clientele and owners bestowed upon Cruz loud and vocal approval for his
antics.

An assault rifle manufacturer and a lumber yard.

You know, places where your typical citizenry will show up
on a daily basis.

These audiences, in short, were targeted as much as any
AR-15 gun sight will do. Cruz holds his public discussions by preaching to the choir.
I doubt that he would venture 10 meters onto a college campus – well A&M
maybe.

So the Chron article, while newsy and ironic, is just a tad
disingenuous. Not all Texans are toothless rubes with confederate flags on
their baseball caps.

Saturday, February 23, 2013

Now I have made an effort this year to see as many of the
Oscar-nominated films as possible and have spent a pretty impressive sum of dead
presidents doing so. So I think I have earned the right to do what I have seen
on all the news and politics shows that I watch on a daily basis. I deserve the
right to present my predictions for the winners at The Oscars tomorrow night.

So here goes.

Best Picture goes to “Lincoln.” No doubt. Doris Kearnes
Goodwin’s story of Lincoln’s struggle to get his 13th Amendment
passed became the year’s lesson in history, a better lesson than the killing of
UBL.

Best Actor? Hands down Daniel Day Lewis. Hal Holbrook did a
good Lincoln on the 80’s mini-series “North and South” but you close your eyes
and you heard Holbrook. You close your eyes at the movies and you heard
Lincoln.

Best Actress. Jennifer Lawrence. The film was surprisingly
good, and you figure out why when you realize that if anyone else played Tiffany
it would have been just a so-so film.

Friday, February 22, 2013

You have to love our Washington politicians. Now, as
sequestration is just a week away, and congress remains in recess, we are
starting to see the finger pointing that goes with any kind of impasse that
develops in DC.

This time we are being told by conservatives that this was
Obama’s idea, and liberals are tsk-tsking, saying that sequestration originated
with congress.

Well a pox on both your houses. First for wasting time
trying to lay the blame at the feet of the opposition instead of working out a
compromise, and second for the sheer hypocrisy that goes with the blame game.

It’s everyone’s fault.

When President Obama announced in debate with Romney last
year that “the sequester is not
something that I've proposed,” he was deflecting. He was spoke
inaccurately. The truth is, when the Budget Control Act of 2011 was being
negotiated the Obama team suggested, as an incentive to deal, that defense
budget cuts could automatically go into effect if the “super-committee” couldn’t
agree on a budget. This to give Republicans the incentive to deal. A similar
measure in social programs was settled on to give Democrats incentive to deal.
There was never any intention of cutting any budgets. This was a poison pill.

And the problem with leaving congress blameless in this is
that they voted for it. Giving Obama the complete blame is idiocy at its best.
It’s like blaming someone else for your jumping over a cliff because that
person suggested you do it.

So now, because no deal is on the table despite the fact
that the poison pill is about to be swallowed hair pulling and finger pointing
rules the day.

And you know what is really ridiculous? Watching all of this
whining and moaning as congress edges our economy over an abyss of their own
construction.

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Back in May, 2005 the Kansas Board of Education flirted with
the notion of teaching intelligent design, the pseudoscience that teaches that
the universe was created by an intelligent being (God) and not in the ways that
collective scientific knowledge has put forth.

In other words, it’s kind of more like we read in the Book
of Genesis and not a lot like the ideas of Einstein, Darwin and primordial soup
theory.

The hearings were well-attended by those sold on the notion
that the universe was created out of nothing by a benign all-knowing deity, but
completely boycotted by the scientific community.

The way this was started, by the way, was through an
organization called The Discovery Institute which developed a “Critical Analysis
of Evolution” lesson plan. This is a thinly veiled attempt at proselytization
in public schools under the guise of academic freedom and critical thinking
skills.

The Board adopted these new standards, then the voters went
to the polls, then the Board voted again to reject these standards.

Fast forward to today. Today the same thing is being tried
in Oklahoma, but this time the standards are being legislated by Republican
State Rep Gus Blackwell, a conservative evangelical Republican. The song is the
same, this time it is being called the Scientific Education and Academic
Freedom Act.

Same theme. This one though says that it is all right to
talk about alternatives to evolution, alternatives to global warming (?) and
alternatives to human cloning. In short it allows a conversation in the Biology
class ”without repercussions.”

”Without repercussions?”

Blackwell explains:

“I proposed this bill
because there are teachers and students who may be afraid of going against what
they see in their textbooks. A student has the freedom to write a paper that
points out that highly complex life may not be explained by chance
mutations."

Now let me tell you why this is a horrible idea, and why
lesson plans should not be legislated.

Biology is a vast subject. It is such a broad subject that
these days biological information is growing almost vertically with time. There
is so much to teach. The last thing you want to do is get bogged down in
nitpicking and challenging things you need to learn about in order to become
informed in biological sciences.

Legislators have no idea what goes on in a science classroom
and how little time there is left to science teachers just to teach their
content. Legislators need to get out of the education business, and evangelical
Republicans need to put religious notions back in church where they belong.

It seems that New York Daily News reporter Dan Friedman
called up a Republican staffer to get what they had on Chuck Hagel, asking them
about whether they had something like Hagel’s unacknowledged campaign
contribution from Friends of Hamas, a totally factitious group that doesn’t exist.The staffer must have had the hair on the
back of his neck raise as he had no idea about that one.

It quickly got conveyed to blogger Ben Shapiro who writes
dirt on Breitbart’s website where it was developed into a story.

A story that was then conveyed to Rand Paul who believed it
and admitted he was concerned about it.

But really, I think the problem is that Republicans are
listening to these rightwing nutjobs on uber-rightwing websites as well as
Limbaugh and Fox News, and they just make stuff up all the time.

So to them, this was nothing new. And it was the kind of
made-up news that is grist for their mill. So when Friedman came out and
admitted that he was the originator of this myth, egg went on the collective faces
of the GOP, and especially Rand “Gullible Me” Paul.

Maybe now these wacky TEApublicans will start to check on
their facts before making complete fools of themselves.

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

The Texas Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans want
to build (another) monument that glorifies Texas’ contribution in the War of
Northern Aggression, known elsewhere as the Civil War. They
want to build one in sleepy Orange, Texas which is perched on the
Texas-Louisiana border.

Such a monument, they say, will “attract people to the
region,” especially when they see a Confederate battle flag fluttering in the
breeze, visible from Interstate 10.Indeed, said a Sons of Confederate Veterans-Texas
Division public relations officer “the more education about the South and what
they were fighting for, the more compassion people will have for the
Confederates and what they did.”

So they want to build a monument in Orange, Texas, as soon
as it stops raining.A

And that, one supposes, is because monuments to Texas
Confederate soldiers is rarer than hen’s teeth in this state. Oh, except for
the lawn surrounding the state capitol building in Austin where one cannot walk
20 feet in any direction without running into one.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans say that they are simply
trying to spread their message of truth about the real reason that the South
seceded from the Union in 1861, and it had nothing at all to do with slavery.

No, really, slavery had nothing to do with it.

It was all about states’ rights and the 10th
Amendment.

Sort of like it is now.

If a state determined that it was right and proper for one
man to own another as chattel then that’s a states’ rights issue, not a moral
issue. Not at all.

And really, it is good and proper for the Sons of
Confederate Veterans to spread their words of truth because that is their 1st
Amendment right to do so. It is completely within their rights to put these
monuments up just as it is completely within the rights of American Nazis to
assemble and extol the virtues of Adolf Hitler and the advantages of National
Socialism.

It is, in short, their right to look, act, and speak in a
manner repugnant to the vast majority of Americans. It is a further reminder of
just how base some people can be, and it helps us all if they identify
themselves for us so we can avoid them and do harm to their cause.

Monday, February 18, 2013

Thank God for Mississippi. If it weren’t for Mississippi
some other state, like the one I live in, for instance, would be last, 50th
out of 50 in something. Mississippi is the state that is rated last in
education however which way to measure it. In Mississippi, if you are dumber
than a bag of hammers that might qualify you for your school’s honor roll.

The proof really is in the pudding. Take for example an error of oversight discovered by Mississippi resident Ranjan Batra.

Ranjan Batra went to see Spielberg’s latest triumph, the
movie “Lincoln” a must-see movie based on an account of history reported in
Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book “Team of Rivals” in which Abraham Lincoln resorted
to desperate politics in order to get his 13th Amendment passed to
put an end to slavery in America forever. He did some independent research and
discovered that 3/4ths of the extant states at the time had ratified the
amendment, leaving 4 of the 5 remaining states to ratify the amendment by 1865.

Not surprisingly to most of us, Mississippi was the lone holdout.
Further research revealed that Mississippi had actually ratified the amendment –
in 1995. Better late than never, I guess. But that act was never made official
by notifying the US Archivist, a necessary requirement.

One person can nullify the whole process, you see, simply by
forgetting to send a letter to DC to let them know what they did. It was an error
of oversight, they claimed.

Now stupid is as stupid does, and it is plausible that
Mississippi’s Secretary of State might have been ignorant of the fact that he
had to notify the Archivist, getting back to the 50th of 50 in
education theme, but I doubt it. And it could be that the Secretary of State
was too preoccupied that day and simply forgot to get that letter drafted, but
there, too, I am extremely skeptical.

More likely, I think, the error of oversight came from the
fact that Mississippi once had a lot of overseers.

Saturday, February 16, 2013

A Member of my State House, the Texas House of
Representatives, has
a new bill filed this week that authorizes public high schools to teach courses on firearms and how to
shoot them.

My, what a great
idea.

The bill, filed
by East Texas State Rep James White, R-Hillister as HB 1142, will allow the
state’s 1100 school districts to offer classes for 9th to 12th
graders with a curriculum that includes “training and educating young people on
their rights and responsibilities, based on the Second Amendment, liberty,
constitutionalism and being members of a free society.”

White said that
the course could be offered as an elective, but I have to say, with the
multi-tasked curriculum that these new courses include, the courses could be
offered to replace for example, a social studies course, like the 1 semester
required course in US Government.

Or it could be a
PE course.

Hunting is a
sport, after all.

And the course is
going to be multi-disciplinary in that it will teach the handling and use of
not only hunting rifles but also shotguns, pistols and revolvers.

There was no
specific mention of training in the use of assault rifles or semi-automatic
pistols, although one could conclude that these are necessarily included as
part and parcel of the tools necessary for proper home defense.

And
ever-farsighted, White included words in his bill that required that the people
teaching the firearm training course must be certified handgun instructors or
law enforcement officers. No mention of the instructor being certified to teach
in secondary classrooms or needing to take a TB test, but I assume that this
was an oversight and will be corrected in the amendment process when this bill
reaches the House floor.

The only downside
that I can foresee is that school districts might have to take on more
liability insurance to cover themselves if someone suffers an injury during the
training. But as White, himself, pointed out, there are all sorts of dangerous
activities that take place in high school such as chemistry experiments and
football practice.

Gee, he has a
point. Besides, what could happen to someone at a shooting range, anyway?

And there is the
added benefit that having such courses offered by high schools might just
decrease the dropout rate as well as boost the grades of that group of students
known as gangbangers who will simply flock to these courses as a way to hone
their firearm handling skills and learn of their constitutional right to keep
and bear arms.

Friday, February 15, 2013

Senator Elizabeth Warren must have had her Wheaties this
morning because in her very first Banking Committee meeting she asked the
question we have all asked each other for nearly 5 years now: Why no
prosecutions of Wall Street banks and hedge fund managers for their role in the
fraud they committed that sent our economy into the crapper.

Her wording:

“When was the last
time you took a Wall Street bank to trial?”

This was a loaded question because Senator Warren, because
of her banking expertise, knew full and well that no bank or manager has ever
been hauled into court and tried. She kept asking the question and kept getting
evasive answers. Here are two.

Answer 1: “"We do not have to bring people to trial"
because they always settle out of court.

That wasn’t exactly answering the question, was it? The
answer would have been “Never.”

Answer 2: “I will have to get back to you with specific
information.”

Famous last words. The last time I heard that it was Mitt
Romney promising to get back with an answer to a question about his finances.

And then the icing on the cake: her summation.

“There are district
attorneys and United States attorneys out there every day squeezing ordinary
citizens on sometimes very thin grounds and taking them to trial in order to
make an example, as they put it. I'm really concerned that 'too big to fail'
has become 'too big for trial."

And you know, it’s ironic. I’m pretty sure that there are
tea baggers out there that would wholeheartedly agree with Warren.

Texas sent Ted Cruz to the Senate and he got his hand
slapped by veteran senators for McCarthyesque demagoguery. Massachusetts sends
Elizabeth Warren to the Senate and she turns Wall Street regulators into
quivering and stuttering spineless masses.

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Today, Texas junior senator, Ted Cruz, impugned theintegrity of Vietnam War veteran Chuck Hagel by implying that he might, just
might, have alliances with North Korea and Saudi Arabia.

This is because Hagel had dealings with both countries,
according to Cruz.

So this means the proposed Secretary of Defense is in
cahoots with foreign powers.

This is a play stolen from the playbook of infamous former
congressman Joe McCarthy.

Well his committeemates, Republican committeemates no less,
didn’t let him get away with this low form of demagoguery if I may be allowed a
redundant phrase. John McCain, for one, slapped Cruz down.

But you know, Cruz had a point. Politics make strange
alliances.

You know…Ted Cruz is not a natural born citizen.He’s naturalized. He was born in Canada.

He’s Canadian.

Does Ted Cruz have improper alliances with our neighbor to
the north? They have French-Canadian separatists in Canada. They sometimes
committed acts of violence. Ted Cruz, a Canadian, MAY have committed violent
acts.

So last night I made reference to one of the oddest
political moments I’ve ever personally witnessed, the mad grab for a bottle of
water. It was so awkward. You don’t. You are not allowed to. You simply avoid
doing something besides talking while your eyes are locked on the camera.

Didn’t see it? Here is a clip so you don’t have to listen to
the entire speech. Nice of CBS news to do that for us.

You know, this is going to be on everyone’s mind ever again.
Marco Rubio and his water bottle gaffe is going to follow him around forever.
It has ended any future for Rubio. And who knows, it might just end the
Republican response forever and ever. First Bobby Jindal squeaking his way into
irrelevance, and now Rubiio. They may not be able to get another Republican to
do this when they see how its only effect is the rendering of a political
career into the dustbin of history.

You know, this reminds me of the Carter/Ford presidential
debate when Gerald Ford, who had a headcold that evening, had a dribble develop
under his left nostril. A dribble that got longer and longer as millions of TV
viewers paid rapt attention to his dribble, but completely missed what Ford was
saying.

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

I am popping the
popcorn tonight to settle down to a rip roaring speech by President Obama that
is hopefully to be peppered by insulting commentary by the TEA Party lowlife
that slithers about on the House floor, as both Members and guests.

Because if I don’t miss my guess civility has completely
left the building in Washington DC, and is being replaced by theatrics and
downright idiocy.

The whole idea, to some of these characters, is not to get
anything done and not to serve their constituents. Their whole reason for being
in Washington is to wreak havoc and tear it all down.

Or I could be completely wrong and President Obama’s speech
will be duly considered by a lucid and rational legislative body who will
politely allow the president his time at the podium uninterrupted by outbursts.

Naaaaah.UPDATE: Well Ted kept his seat and now I know why. It seems that 31 Democratic congressmen each invited victims of gun violence to be their guests at the State of the Union Address. 31 to 1. And now I'm watching Marco Rubio whining about big government. And making a fool of himself with a water bottle. I predict it will get notice. Rubio's "Watergate."

Monday, February 11, 2013

Up to just the last couple of decades the President’s State
of the Union message was a one-sided thing where the President satisfies his
constitutionally required duty to deliver to Congress “Information of the State
of the Union” “from time to time,” and there was no answering speech by the
party currently not having a president in office.

Then, in 1966 an official response to the presidential
address was organized, with the opposing party picking one of their own to make
its case to the public should they deign to listen.

I always thought that it was a pointless exercise in that it
only underlined the fact that everything they mention is not an actual agenda
item of the Executive Branch. Besides that it is an open admission that they
wield no power.

But be it as it may, it’s a good thing that we had a
two-party system or we would have to suffer through God knows how many opposing
speeches as they might have in Italy.

Up until this year, that is.

This year, the TEA Party made it official that they are becoming
a third party in that they will have their own serious response to the president’s
speech. It’s true.

Marco Rubio will be the next Bobby Jindal this week,
signaling again the Republican Party’s desperate attempts to make themselves
look like a multi-cultural diverse party. But then we get to hear the TEA Party’s
opposing views which are, presumably, not the views of the mainstream
Republican Party.

And even better, the TEA Party speech will be delivered by (Ayn)
Rand Paul. You may recall that in two previous years, the TEA Party's response were laughingly delivered by Congreswoman Bachmann (T - Whacktown) and failed presidential hopeful Herman (9-9-9) Cain. This effort marks the first time that an actual serious TEA Party operative will deliver the speech. It is the first legitimate TEA Party response.

One wonders if Senator Paul will take shots at both the
President’s and Rubio’s speeches or whether he’ll concentrate on one side or
the other.

I find this to be a fascinating turn of events and
underlines what is clearly becoming a deep schism in the party of Lincoln (a
party, I believe, that Lincoln would not be a party to today). This could mean
the beginning of the end of the conservative movement in this country where the
fight for dominance will do nothing but render each faction completely
impotent.

Saturday, February 09, 2013

The irony is this: Republicans and TEA Partiers make a big
deal about following the constitution and make that point by wearing a flag pin
on their lapels, and carrying a pocket version of the constitution everywhere
they go, pulling it out and showing it to the cameras from time to time.

And at the beginning of the previous congress it became a
rule in the House that the constitution should be consulted for every piece of
legislation that gets introduced. Something that they kind of forgot about in
the present session.

The irony is this: Republicans do all of the above and they
are the ones chiefly responsible for continued erosion of our constitutional
rights and liberties.

Today, let’s look at the Post Office.

The Post Office is a federal government agency expressly
required in the US Constitution.

Section 8 of Article
1:

The Congress shall
have Power To…establish Post Offices and post Roads.

And this is because being able to get mail delivered
everywhere was considered to be a necessary function of the government, and
right from the beginning.

And that, friends and neighbors, was fully intended by the
lame duck session of the Republican-controlled congress in late 2006. Congress
jammed a law through in the waning days of 2006 that made doing the business of
mail delivery at reasonable rates an impossibility.

Congress made it a law that the Post Office must fully fund
a retirement program for its employees to be available for disbursement to
retirees who aren’t even born yet – and they gave them only 10 years to do it.

No one, no one in the private sector does business like
that. The purpose of the law is and was clear at the time it was passed: it was
a naked assault on the Post Office to drive it out of business so that the mail
could be delivered by for-profit enterprises, like FedEx and DHL. So that 44
cent stamp to send a letter to Aunt Mildred can be replaced by a 27 dollar fee
that one pays FedEx for the same service.

So the Post Office has begun to tighten its belt and
Saturday delivery will be no more. Next, we will be hearing about “Tidy Friday”
in the Post Office. So the end of the Post Office has begun and no one in the
present House seems to want to put a stop to it.

Even though the framers of the constitution seemed to think
it was a necessary function of government.

Thursday, February 07, 2013

In an overwhelming Yes vote, members of the British House of
Commons approved a measure that would serve to allow gays in England and Wales
to marry with full rights that come with marriage.

They beat us damnit.

Just like they beat us with national healthcare.

The surprise is that the bill was supported by the Tory (conservative)
Prime Minister, David Cameron. And I was not so surprised to find out today
that more than half of Cameron’s own party voted against the measure.

They’re supposed to be in the majority.

The vote wasn’t even close, with 400 voting Yes, and 175
voting no, and while 123 Tory members voted for the legislation, 136 voted to
oppose it and a whole bunch abstained. But with a combination of the grand
majority of Labour Party votes, and the minority votes from the majority party,
the measure was easily passed.

And I think many were enabled to vote their consciences once
it was settled that the Church of England would not be coerced into performing
marriages of gays, something they have indicated that they do not want to do.

Interesting. Interesting that the C of E’s equivalent in
America is the Episcopal Church, which not only had gay pastors but were among
the first to perform gay marriages where it is legal here.

Interesting also, that the Church of England was essentially
founded on the principle of changing the definition of marriage to one where
divorce was not only tolerated, but allowed on numerous occasions.

Tuesday, February 05, 2013

What do you think Texas parents would prefer, sending their
children to a school to learn things, or sending their children to an armed
camp? Legislators in the state capitol met today to discuss the arming of
teachers in schools – among other things – and listened to a wide spectrum of
ideas about all that. You can read about some of these ideas here.

As I mentioned in a previous blog, there is one school
district in northern Texas that has permitted some of its teachers to carry
concealed weapons to protect the school should there be an armed attack by gun-wielding
villains. And in Utah, teachers have been allowed to carry concealed weapons
and are not required to tell the parents of their students that they do. As a
matter of fact, they are forbidden to do this – it’s all part of the safety
plan.

And like belly buttons, everyone has an opinion.

But whose opinion should legislators listen to? Of all the interested
parties, whose opinion matters the most?

If you don’t know the answer to that question you have never
been a parent, or you have forgotten what it’s like to be one.

The only people whose opinions matter in this controversy
are parents. I say let the parents all vote, and the pro-armed camp teachers
can all have their children bussed to one campus where every teacher is packing
a Glock.

All one of them.

One teacher and a one room schoolhouse is all you would
need. Preferably painted red.

Monday, February 04, 2013

Judge John Dietz has – again - ruled that the way that the state funds its
public education system is unconstitutional, and doubly so.

This is round two for Judge Dietz who is no novice when it
comes to inadequate school funding. In 2004 he ruled in a case brought by 300
school districts that the state’s education funding system was unconstitutional
and inefficient, and ordered the state to halt school spending in October 2005
if problems aren't fixed.

The state legislature responded by cuts local school
property taxes by one-third while allocating more state funding. To prevent
revenue loss, they placed minimum funding requirements on districts based on a “temporary
freeze” in the amount of money districts spent per student that year. The
temporary freeze was never lifted, however. In addition the Legislature capped tax
rates at $1.17 per $100 of property valuation and allowed each district to choose
how much to levy in taxes.

Then the legislature, in 2011, slashed the funds that the
state provided by $5.6 billion while at the same time passing new standardized
testing standards that raised the bar on what every public school student must
do in order to graduate.

To this, Judge Dietz had some choice words in today’s ruling:

“There is no free lunch. We either want increased standards
and are willing to pay the price, or we don't.”

In today’s ruling, Judge Dietz ruled the funding system
unconstitutional on two fronts: it does not provide adequate funding for “general
diffusion of knowledge” as required in the state’s constitution, and that the
funding system was a de facto income
tax, which is forbidden by the constitution.

A written ruling will be issued within a month, but nothing
is going to happen on this one until the all-Republican state supreme court
gets a chance to rule, and that won’t happen during this legislative session.

Because as you know, there’s no hurry. When it comes to
raising revenue for public school education in Texas there is never a need to
hurry.